Home State Winnings

Here's a fun fact: only two people in history have won a U.S. Presidential election without carrying their home state's electoral votes. In 1844, James Polk of Tennessee lost that state by 0.1% to Henry Clay of Kentucky. Then, in 1916 (a strange election to begin with, given Woodrow Wilson's bizarre three-way victory in 1912 and the fact that it's one of only two times that a President's re-election margin has been narrower than his initial victory) President Wilson lost New Jersey rather healthily to Charles Evans Hughes of New York, though he did capture a higher percentage of the popular vote in New Jersey than he had four years earlier. Polk is the only person ever to do this without already having been President, of course.

As for Presidential losers? Well, there have been 60 losing major-party Presidential candidates in our history, by my count, including multiple losers like William Jennings Bryan. Together they have won their home state just 33 times, or 55%. There appears to be some streakiness here as well: through 1848 73% of losers won their home state. Then, through 1884, just 45% of losers won their home state. As if that weren't bad enough, from then through 1956 just 25% of losers were successful at home. Since Adlai Stevenson's double defeats to Eisenhower, though, only George McGovern (who lost a landslide) and Al Gore (who won the election) lost their home states, a loser home winning percentage of 86%.

So, what does this tell us about the 2012 elections? Well, I think it's kind of a reasonable conclusion that if the Republican can't win their home state, they aren't very well favored to win the election. Sure, there's no particular reason to say this must be, and after all Al Gore did essentially win his election, but the fact remains that it is incredibly historically rare for someone who isn't currently President to win a Presidential election without the support of their native state. Let's look at the people FiveThirtyEight ranked recently as either a member of the "top tier" or a "wild card," as opposed to a "long-shot." Let's be honest, I don't care about guys like Buddy Roemer in this analysis. So, here goes:



Mitt Romney, Massachusetts: This looks kind of tough. Starting in 1960 the low point for the Democratic Presidential candidate's margin in Massachusetts relative to their overall national margin was +9.7% in the 1980 race, featuring a Southern Democrat in Jimmy Carter. Admittedly the +18.5% relative margin Obama posted in Massachusetts in '08 was the lowest mark since Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign against New Englander G.H.W. Bush, but I wouldn't expect to see Massachusetts less than fifteen points more Democratic-leaning than the country as a whole, would you? The last PublicPolicyPolling poll out of Massachusetts showed Obama trouncing Romney by 20 points there, and while that's a lot better for Romney than the 36% margin Obama posted against Palin, it's still not great. I don't see him winning his home state any time soon, though I don't think that's a death blow to his chances given which state it is.

Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota: Again, this does not look easy. It's also probably a lot more critical for Pawlenty than for Romney, since unlike Massachusetts, the innermost sanctum of the kingdom of the liberals, Minnesota's kind of a swing state. Though it was between 10 and 20 points more favorable for Democrats than the nation as a whole from 1968 through 1988, Democrats haven't posted those kinds of numbers there since, and Obama only managed a 3% bigger win in Minnesota than he put up nationally. PPP's latest poll showed Pawlenty the strongest contender against Obama there, but at an eight point deficit. I probably think that for Pawlenty it is basically a case of, he will win his home state iff he wins the whole election. Also, I don't think he's top-tier anymore.

Rick Perry, Texas: This one is surprisingly troublesome for Perry. Texas hasn't been friendly to a Democrat compared to the whole U.S. since 1976, and that was Jimmy Carter. Moreover, it's been at least 10% more Republican than the nation every year since 1996, with Obama posting a lousy -19% there in '08. While Texas may become winnable for Democrats with future Hispanic growth, it isn't there yet. However. PPP's last survey, in late June, showed him trailing Obama by two points. The thing is, while Rick Perry has been Governor there for eleven years now and can run that total to fourteen if he so chooses, since his last re-election he's become kind of unpopular in Texas. 43/52 unpopular, according to PPP. So Perry could be in serious trouble on this front: his home state is a big Republican state, indeed the biggest Republican state, and if Texans are sick of him and he can't deliver there, there is no way he becomes President.

Michele Bachmann, Minnesota: See Pawlenty's paragraph for a description of Minnesota. Bachmann's trouble is that, while Pawlenty's entire raison d'etre is his supposed ability to sell genuine conservativism in a real blue state, Bachmann has never been elected by Minnesota. She's been elected by one particular slice of Minnesota. Maybe this is why Representatives rarely become President: they don't really have a home state all of which has declared that it likes them. The same poll that showed Pawlenty trailing Obama by just 8 points back in early June found Bachmann trailing by 21, worst of anyone in the field including Sarah Palin. Obviously the whole point of Michele Bachmann is her Goldwater-esque unelectability, but she fails rather spectacularly on the home-state test.

Sarah Palin, Alaska: Alaska, again, should be an easy state for a Republican. It's not as vital a state as Texas for the electoral math, but if you don't win it you're not looking good. Since 1976 the best number a Democrat has put up there was about 15% worse than their national performance, that being Clinton in '92. For the first decade-plus of its statehood Alaska was a toss-up state, maybe slightly Democratic leaning, but it's been deep red ever since. Indeed, with Palin on the ticket in '08 John McCain performed 29 points better there than nationally, in keeping with recent Alaska numbers. However, subsequent to that election Ms. Palin became damned unpopular at home, resigned her governorship, and then became even less popular. I haven't seen head-to-heads against Obama, but her latest Alaska favorability numbers were 33/58 unpopular. That's ugly, and I think she might lose her home state to Obama. Not that we need anything new to tell us she won't win the general election, but still, she can't even win her deep-red home state. That's bad.

Jon Huntsman, Utah: This is an easy one. If there is one thing to say in favor of Jon Huntsman's Presidential campaign, it's that he would win his home state. The last Democrat with a less than 10% handicap in Utah compared to the nation was John F. Kennedy; the last Republican with less than a 20% relative advantage in Utah was Richard Nixon. Obama himself was 35% worse in Utah than in America as a whole. He's not making that deficit up. Huntsman himself leads Obama by 40 points there in the last PPP offering. He would win Utah, end of story. Now, for sort of the opposite of Romney's reasons, that might not matter much.

Herman Cain, Georgia: This is another case where failure to deliver a home state could be problematic. Georgia is a big (16 EVs come 2012), red state. No Democrat has overperformed there relative to national averages since Jimmy Carter (who kicked some ass in his home state), and no non-Southern Democrat has done better there than -12% compared to the national vote since Kennedy. However, Obama, a black Illinois liberal, posted just a -12.5% mark there, which combined with his 7.3% victory overall gave him barely a 5% defeat in the heart of the south. And Herman Cain is also black. Now sure, he's also crazy, but that just means that he loses some hard-core racists (probably to an independent or to staying at home) and he loses some borderline independents (probably to Obama). And no Republican is winning the White House without Georgia any time soon, especially to Barack Obama. Lo and behold, PPP's foray into Georgia in early April found Cain trailing the President by 5. That wasn't just before the bin Laden bounce faded, it was before the bin Laden bounce. So I think Herman Cain could lose Georgia, which admittedly is just emblematic of the fact that he could lose nationally by one hell of a margin. Still, problematic for him.

Nate mentions three others as "team 2016," people who aren't really contenders for this cycle but could look to build momentum for the next race: Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, and Jeb Bush. I do think that Jeb's ability to deliver Florida would probably be a key strength of his candidacy, though I think it has other weaknesses starting with his last name. Let me tell you, New Jersey will never vote for Chris Christie for the White House. As for Paul Ryan, I dunno, Wisconsin's gotten kinda conservative of late. At the same time, he suffers from the same thing Bachmann does, namely that he does not (yet) represent the entire state. Ryan has declined to seek Sen. Kohl's open Senate seat in 2012, so it seems kind of unlikely that he will have a statewide office by 2016. I also think he's kind of crazy, and has peaked a little too early.

Honestly, I think the issue of winning your home state is problematic for these Republican candidates. Pawlenty might be able to deliver in Minnesota, but if he doesn't (and there's no guarantee he could) he's clearly toast. Bachmann doesn't have a prayer of carrying Minnesota. Rick Perry is in alarming danger of losing Texas of all places, which would guarantee Obama a landslide. Palin and Cain likewise would jeopardize solidly Republican states, though in Palin's case that's really just a symptom of her spectacular unpopularity since Alaska's so tiny. Huntsman would win Utah in a landslide, but as it is very small and already very Republican that doesn't look like it should matter so much; besides, there's about a 0% chance of his being the nominee.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney's problem is that his home state is Massachusetts. And it's just too dark blue for him to win. Now, you could argue that it shouldn't matter, that losing one of the other party's strongest states doesn't really say anything about his candidacy. But I think that's wrong. I think a Romney bid would give Obama a bit of a structural advantage in the electoral college. Romney's home is in the blue states, not just in Massachusetts. He's the Democrat's Republican, the moderate, sensible technocrat who, admittedly, is currently being forced to pretend to be crazy to satisfy his party but really knows better. A lot of the numbers Romney puts up on highly Democratic states are gaudy: in PPP polls of states Obama won by at least 10 points in 2008, Romney trails by just 10.9% on average. Obama won those states by an average of 17.1%. That's nearly a big enough shift to get Romney the win in the national popular vote. But here's the problem: in states Obama won by less than 10% in '08 that PPP has polled, which he won by an average of 6%, Romney trails by 3.6%, a shift of just one-third what he needs nationally. And in states Obama lost by up to 14% (don't ask), which Obama lost by an average of 8 points, Romney leads him by just 6.6% on average. He loses ground.

So a whole lot of Mitt Romney's strength as a candidate is in states that are too deep blue for him to win. And the thing about all of those extra votes in Massachusetts, and Michigan, and Washington and New Mexico is that they don't count. It's not just that he can't deliver his home state for his party: it's that the places where he delivers votes are places where he can't deliver enough votes for it to matter. So if Obama leads Romney and Perry, let's say, by the same amount nationally, since so many more of Romney's voters are in states Obama will win anyway, he's actually worse off than Perry. (Okay, so that'll never happen, but you get the point.) Though one is tempted to dismiss Romney's home-state woes as an anomaly because he hails from the GOP's least favorite state, it's really more than that. It's a pretty major problem for his candidacy.

Of course, if he wins by a solid 5-10% margin then he'll probably get about 450 EVs and I'll look kind of silly.